Abby Leigh is looking forward to watching the moon turn purple, unaware that deadly bacteria from a passing comet will soon kill off older teens and adults. The lightning-fast epidemic sweeps across the planet when the germs attack the hormones produced during puberty. On a small island off the coast of Maine, Abby must help her brother and baby sister survive in this new world, but all the while she has a ticking time bomb inside of her -- adolescence.

Love survives everything... Even death. Unfortunately, so does hate. When Mark wants to see his dead mother again... He gets his chance. But, like everything else in life... It comes at a hefty price. While normal sixteen-year-old boys are out chasing girls, Mark is floating outside his own body being chased by a nefarious demon. Death itself can't keep him from trying to see his dead mother again, but when he disturbs Phasma-the Guardian of Threshold, he may have gone too far. Forced into Threshold--the mystical world of the dead--to rescue his clumsy best friend; Mark will not only have to defeat Phasma and his army of Night Dwellers, but his own demons if he's going to save his friend, find his mother and survive the night. How far would you go to see a dead loved one again?

Sometime during the night Bratt finally drifted off to
sleep. When he woke up, after hitting the snooze button on his clock radio
three times, it was nearly eight o’clock. A small, vengeful part of him hoped
that Jeannie had slept as badly as he had, but he regretted the thought right away.
It had been hard enough on both of them to witness Claire being cross-examined.
He would try to be a little more understanding about why she blamed him along
with Perron for how it had gone. The little voice in his head, which had been
quite insistent the night before, woke up just in time to ask him if Jeannie
wasn’t right to do so.

“Shut up, already,” Bratt said out loud.

Great, now I’m talking to myself, he thought
as he headed for the shower. From now on I mind my own business.

He showered and shaved, and ate breakfast while
reading the sports section of his morning paper. He assiduously avoided the
city beat where, no doubt, a detailed account of the previous day’s courthouse
activities could be found. The trials and tribulations of Montreal’s once-mighty
hockey team were sufficiently aggravating morning fare.

By the time he left for work he had stopped hearing
that irritating little voice, or, at least, had stopped listening to it.

Bratt et Leblanc, Avocats. The brass
sign in the lobby at 511 Place d’Armes in Old Montreal was big enough to
be seen from the street. Bratt pushed the heavy steel and glass door open and
entered the stately brownstone. It was built in 1888 and, at nine stories, was
the first skyscraper in Montreal. He stamped the snow from his feet on
the rubber mat at the entrance and headed for the elevators, their doors also
plated in shiny brass.

He and J.P. Leblanc had started out together sixteen
years earlier, in a much less elegant building not too far from where their offices
were now. Leblanc had been spinning his wheels for three years at Legal Aid
when he decided to propose partnership to his old law school buddy Robert
Bratt.

Bratt had begun his own legal career at the provincial
prosecutor’s office, but too much internal politics and not enough money were
incentives enough for him to jump to the other side of the judicial
divide.

At the time his immediate superior was Francis Parent,
a Jesuit-educated prosecutor with a nearly religious devotion to ridding his
city’s hallowed streets of criminals and sinners. He cleaved to the virtuous
path of his career as if he was following the Via Dolorosa.

Parent, who was an average trial lawyer of uncommon
self-righteousness, looked upon Bratt’s departure from the Crown as an act of
betrayal to his cause. He was certain that the young lawyer was selling his
soul and jumping into a moral cesspool by joining the defense.

But Bratt had seen enough in his three years working
with prosecutors and policemen to know that few of them had an exclusive claim
to the moral high ground. In law, he learned, it was all a man could do to
remain true to his own ethical code.

Heading up to his office in the elevator, Bratt felt
the worries of the past twenty-four hours start to melt away. Even more than
his expensive apartment with a view of Mount Royal, or his lakeside cottage in
the Eastern Townships, this office was his true home.

Here he was among his own kind. Nobody would question
his values or try to burden him with guilt. Nobody would criticize him for how
he made his living. He was the unquestioned top dog in the firm, and that
simple thought put the spring back into his step and brought a wide grin to his
face. When he walked through the firm’s ornate wooden doors nobody would have suspected
the inner turmoil that had kept him up half the night.

Sylvie, the receptionist, looked up at the sound of
his voice as he greeted her. She handed him his mail and smiled back a hello
while talking into her ever-present headset. Bratt noticed that the door to his
office was closed and threw a questioning look in her direction. She covered
the mouthpiece with one hand and said, “John’s there. I think he had another
bad night.”

“John” was John Kalouderis, an associate in the firm
who, in recent years, had become close friends with Bratt. He had a brilliant
legal mind, when it wasn’t totally fogged by alcohol, and that was a rare
enough occurrence these days. Kalouderis might not have lasted at the firm,
even with Bratt’s friendship, if he didn’t have a particularly large, and
largely dishonest, extended family, whose members regularly hired the firm’s
high-priced lawyers to get them out of their scrapes with the law.

Bratt opened his office door and was immediately
greeted by the licorice smell of ouzo emanating from the carcass sprawled
across his leather sofa. Kalouderis’s snores were the only signs that the inert
form held a grip on life. Bratt stood over the prone, slack-mouthed figure and
shook it none too gently.

“Hey, Yanni, wake up! You’re drooling all over my
sofa.”

Kalouderis snorted, opened his eyes and looked up
blearily at his disturber, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. His
expression was one of vague recognition, like he was searching his memory to
put a name to a face that he hadn’t seen in a long time. He quickly gave up
trying to remember and turned back onto his stomach, burying his face into the
sofa.

“Fuck off, malaka! Get your own bed,” he
mumbled.

Bratt threw his mail onto the pile of sweaty hair that
was stuck to the back of his friend’s head, but got no reaction. Exasperated,
he dropped into the chair behind his desk. Kalouderis’s vulgarity, as well as
his indifference to Bratt’s arrival, irked him.

That last exhortation finally led to some movement on
Kalouderis’s part. He began getting up slowly, gingerly putting his stockinged
feet onto the floor as if he expected to find shards of broken glass there.

Bratt asked, “Did you spend the night here or did you
crawl in drunk this morning?”

Kalouderis scratched his head at the question and
tried to keep his gaze level at Bratt while answering. “Both, I guess. I got in
about five o’clock, and I’ve been stretched-out here ever since.”

Bratt rested his head on the back of his chair and
sighed. Every now and then Kalouderis and a group of his favorite cousins would
hit the town and attempt to commit collective suicide by alcohol. This time he
looked like he had almost succeeded. Bratt was concerned that his friend was
going to embarrass himself publicly one day, which would, of course, embarrass
the firm. Still, there was a part of Bratt that felt envy, wishing he could be
as irresponsible with his own health and career. But he had too much to lose,
in his personal and professional lives, to risk it for a night of uncontrolled
drinking.

Kalouderis began awkwardly fishing around with his
hands under the sofa, looking for his shoes. Finally retrieving them, he burped
and struggled to his feet, a loafer in each hand. Bratt watched the proceedings
with a sense of irritation, tapping his fingers on his desk in barely repressed
impatience.

Kalouderis swayed slightly where he stood and breathed
in deeply through his nose. “Geez, I reek. Mind if I use your shower?”

“As a matter of fact, I insist on it,” Bratt replied,
thinking of the staff and clientele who would come into contact with Kalouderis
during the day.

Once his friend had shuffled off to the partners’
private shower area, Bratt turned his attention to his day’s work. He had a
number of phone calls to make before drafting his final arguments for the Hall
trial. Brenton would probably spend all of tomorrow pleading, so Bratt wouldn’t
have to plead until Thursday morning.

He remembered that Nate Morris was testifying in his
rape trial that morning. The jury would probably start deliberating some time
tomorrow, and Bratt’s experience told him they probably wouldn’t have to
deliberate very long. If, or when, they acquitted Morris, Bratt suspected that
he would be having another heated discussion with Jeannie. He would get as much
work as he could done now while his mind was still free from the aggravation
that awaited him.

Bratt was less than an hour into reviewing his trial
notes when J.P. Leblanc opened his office door without knocking. He walked in
and, with an audible grunt, sat down heavily on the sofa that had so recently
served as Kalouderis’s bed. Leblanc was more than eighty pounds overweight and
a heavy smoker. Whenever he sat, it was always heavily. Grunting was optional.

“Who the hell made a mess in the shower?”

“Probably John,” Bratt answered, without looking up
from his papers. “I found him asleep and drooling all over that sofa when I
came in this morning.”

“Aw, crap,” Leblanc said, trying to jump up from any
wet spot he may have sat on, but only managing to shift his position to the
middle of the sofa before the exertion made him give up. “That pig,” he said,
red-faced. “I should fire him, you know.”

“Yes, you should. If you go do it now maybe I can get
some work done.”

Bratt looked up to see if his partner had gotten his
point, but Leblanc hadn’t moved. Watching him slowly ruminate over whatever it
was he wanted to talk about, Bratt wondered, and not for the first time, how
such an eclectic group of people had ended up working, and working so well,
together. About the only thing the eleven lawyers in the firm had in common was
a highly competitive nature and a willingness to do whatever was necessary to
win. Over the years this had kept a harmony of sorts in place between them.

Leblanc sat without speaking, although he clearly had
something on his mind.

“So, how’d the interviews go?” Bratt asked. “Find any
diamonds in the rough?”

Bratt put down his note pad, folded his arms across
his chest, and cleared his throat impatiently.

“Anything else?”

“Oh, yeah. You hear about Lynn Sévigny?”

Bratt was surprised at the topic his partner had
chosen to broach. Sévigny was a struggling, but fiercely independent, sole
practitioner who rented a small office down the hall from them. Bratt had
always admired her fighting spirit and, on occasion, had discreetly sent some
business her way. He had been among the first people she had confided in when a
cancerous lump had been found in her left breast.

“I heard they operated on her,” Bratt said.

“Yeah. She…you know-”

“Don’t say it,” Bratt interrupted. “I know what they
did.”

“Yeah, anyway, she’s not going back to work for a
while, you know, what with the chemo she’ll probably have to get and stuff. You
know it makes them go bald.”

“I’m aware that can happen,” Bratt said, uncomfortable
about discussing Sévigny’s medical problems with his less than sensitive
partner.

Leblanc scratched his head, trying to look concerned
and thoughtful. “This is gonna be tough on her, financially-speaking. You know
if she’s off work for a long time she’s gonna lose a lot of clients.”

“I know. I think she has some insurance.”

“Yeah, I guess so, although she probably couldn’t
afford enough.” There was another thoughtful pause from Leblanc. “Thing is,
maybe we can help her out a bit.”

Bratt had never expected altruism from Leblanc. He had
been partners with the man long enough to know that he didn’t spend too much of
his time worrying about lawyers outside the firm.

“Help her how?”

“She was scheduled to do a murder trial this term. You
know, that Small kid who’s been in the papers. It’s supposed to start in three
weeks or so, and now that her guy’s going to need a new lawyer I thought we
should look into taking over the case from her.”

Bratt knew he should have seen this coming. “The
woman’s just been operated on and the vultures are already circling! Some help
you’re offering.”

“Come on, Bobby. I’m really thinking of her. At least
we can take care of her a bit from whatever we get, which a lot of other guys
wouldn’t do, you know. Besides, this kid’s been inside for I don’t know how
many months. We can’t let him wait until she’s back on her feet to have his
trial. That would be unconscionable. She knows that, I’m sure. Anyway, I’m
going to see her in a couple of days in the hospital, so I thought I’d speak to
her about the case then.”

“Don’t forget to bring her flowers while you’re at
it,” Bratt snapped.

Leblanc waved Bratt’s remark away. He slid his bulk
back over to the side of the sofa, pushed with all his strength on its padded
arm, and slowly levered himself up to his feet with another grunt.

“Look, why should the file end up with Chartrand or
Gold? At least we’ve always been friendly, and I’m sure she’d prefer that it
was us who took over for her than one of those other guys.”

Bratt didn’t answer, so Leblanc just shrugged and
walked back out, his message delivered. He closed the door softly behind him,
leaving Bratt to try to get his thoughts back on his trial notes.

He didn’t relish being one of the sharks getting ready
to pounce on the remains of Lynn Sévigny’s practice, but maybe Leblanc was
right. She probably would prefer the Small murder file going to their office
rather than to certain other lawyers.

Either way, it wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t about to
jump into a murder trial that was due to start in less than a month. Once he
had won over the jury in Cooper Hall’s trial he was going to take some
well-deserved time off to recharge his batteries, and maybe mend some fences
with Jeannie.

The next day was Wednesday, and Bratt was back in
court for the reprise of the fraud trial. As Brenton’s final arguments dragged
into the afternoon Bratt received a note telling him that the jury in Nate
Morris’s trial was still deliberating. He slipped the note into his pocket and
tried to concentrate on his own case.

Brenton gave a detailed recitation of the facts that
had been alleged against Hall, delivered in the prosecutor’s inimitably slow
and phlegmatic style. Most of Bratt’s mental energy was used up trying to look
like he was paying attention while his esteemed adversary droned on and on,
reminding Bratt of how painfully dull much of the trial had been.

Bratt let his eyes roam around the courtroom, and they
stopped at the long legs of Sergeant-Detective Nancy Morin sitting in the first
row of the gallery. She wore a blue suit jacket over a skirt with a fashionably
high hemline which revealed that she did some serious running when she wasn’t
sitting in court.

Her light brown hair was cut just above her ears,
revealing a strong, but graceful neck. Once upon a time Bratt might have found
her athletic build a bit too muscular for his taste, but in the two months of
this trial she had managed to radically change his tastes. Now their mutual
attraction was evident to anyone who watched them interact in the courthouse
hallways.

His gaze lingered on her legs and a small smile formed
on his lips as he recalled the sparks that had flown when he had cross-examined
her over a month earlier. He had tried attacking Morin on everything from her
personal honesty to her professional competence, but she hadn’t backed down an
inch. Her pale, greyish-green eyes had flashed angrily at him as she stood her
ground against his onslaught. Her defiance had actually excited him, to the
point where he lost track of his questions more than once.

His grin widened at that memory, and then he realized
that she was looking straight back at him, also smiling. He felt unexpectedly
embarrassed and snapped his gaze back to Brenton.

That was really smooth, he chided
himself. She’s really gotten to you, Bobby.

Bratt tried to keep his attention on Brenton’s
monologue on the off-chance that he might miss something of interest. He had no
reason to fear, though. The details and minutiae of the Crown’s evidence that
was being dumped on the jury seemed to have lost all meaning to anyone other
than Brenton himself.

What passed for Brenton’s style was anything but
dramatic or exciting. His calm, ploddingly analytical arguments betrayed his
conservative, English schooling, and Bratt was glad to notice that they did
nothing to keep the jury’s interest or attention. Among the twelve sworn
citizens, some eyes wandered, while others slowly shut, only to blink rapidly
open again, as Brenton reviewed the countless graphs and charts that had been
prepared by the Crown’s best forensic accountants. Yawns were barely stifled as
Brenton carefully listed offshore bank accounts and dummy numbered companies,
in the hope that the jury would understand how they all linked together like a
chain that should come together to imprison Hall.

Bratt had no doubt that this chain of transactions
could fatally encircle his client. His arguments tomorrow would aim at the
chain’s weakest links, those officers of Hall’s companies who had testified for
the prosecution. For much of the trial’s two months he had poked and prodded
and questioned them until he was certain they had lost all credibility in the
jury’s eyes. When it was his turn to plead he would remind the jury, in a much
more dramatic and entertaining style than Brenton, of how unworthy of its trust
these men were.

Once the testimony of these witnesses was set aside,
the Crown’s case against Hall became purely circumstantial. Bratt loved
that term, “purely circumstantial.” He was sure some American TV writer
must have coined it. Any lawyer knew that circumstantial evidence could often
be more accurate and more damaging than a dozen eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses were
notorious for forgetting or misconstruing the most basic facts. They regularly
bent the truth to make themselves look more important or their testimony more
relevant.

Despite that, most jurors felt only a roomful of
eyewitnesses could assure them that an accused was guilty. Show them a solid
case made up entirely of circumstantial evidence, and chances were they’d still
have lingering doubts.

And Bratt knew that those little doubts were what
acquittals were made of.

The following morning a clean layer of snow that had
fallen overnight covered the trees on the hillside adjacent to Bratt’s
apartment building. The previous day’s bright sunshine had been replaced by a
heavily overcast sky. According to the incomprehensible rules of Montreal
winters, that meant that this day would be warmer than the day before. With the
rise in temperature all that glistening snow would soon melt into piles of
mud-like slush. Municipal snow-clearing crews were in the midst of their
seemingly annual work slowdown, and the streets and sidewalks would be an
adventure to negotiate.

The taxi carrying Bratt straight to court from his
apartment made its way slowly through the clogged and sloppy streets. Despite
the depressing weather, his mood remained upbeat. Two months of deathly boredom
had been replaced by a feeling of near-giddiness in anticipation of finally
addressing the jury. Instead of the countless hours he spent slumped in his
chair yesterday, praying that Brenton would pack it in before one of the jurors
became suicidal, today Bratt was to be the center of attention.

He saw himself standing, with just the lightest touch
of cockiness, in front of the jury and making his brief, but brilliant, final
arguments. His well-chosen words would seem to fly by, compared to the previous
day’s marathon. He would display the casual, self-effacing charm for which he
was well-known, seemingly almost embarrassed at his own hard-to-conceal
cleverness and wit.

He would guide the jury easily to the conclusion that
the Crown witnesses should be ignored and the circumstantial evidence rejected,
so that everyone could happily return to their regular lives, feeling good
about themselves and a job well done.

Bratt looked out of the taxi window as he approached
the tall, featureless building that was the Palais de Justice. Its flat,
slate-grey exterior matched the dull winter clouds overhead. The taxi pulled
out of the early-morning traffic and stopped at the curb in front of the Notre
Dame Street entrance. On the sidewalk, pedestrians balanced themselves like
tightrope walkers as they stepped across the melting ice and over unplowed snow
banks. Their faces expressed frustration and worry at the precariousness of
their footing.

Bratt opened the car door, stretched one long leg out
and smoothly stepped over the slush-filled roadway. Then he gingerly stepped
across the still-frozen sidewalk and headed in the direction of the courthouse.
A city worker was busy salting the cement steps to prevent any potential
accidents. Bratt saw several fellow lawyers, over-stuffed briefcases in hand,
inching carefully up the stairs ahead of him. He smiled cynically as he
imagined all the lawsuits they would gladly file if they ever took a spill on
government property.

He gripped the handrails tightly, tucked his chin into
his upturned collar against a sudden draft of cold wind and followed the trail
of salt up the stairs and through the automatic revolving door.

Once he was inside the cavernous, but dimly-lit,
atrium his glasses immediately fogged up from the warm air. The large lobby
area hummed softly with the sounds of the usual collection of lawyers and
policemen, litigants and witnesses, and unemployed courthouse regulars who
depended on the daily drama of the law for some free entertainment on these
cold winter days.

He moved forward, resigned to the fact that everyone
around him would be nothing but a blur for the next minute or so. He passed the
information desk and the Espresso counter, squinting over his now useless
glasses, nodding and smiling at the half-seen faces that floated by. He may not
have been able to recognize them but he assumed that they all recognized
him.

When he reached the escalator a large, blurry figure
brushed up against his left arm.

“Better wipe those glasses clean before you get to the
TV cameras, Bobby-boy,” Leblanc said, breathing heavily from the effort of
catching up with Bratt. “They’ll ruin your carefully-groomed image of
sophistication.”

Bratt turned toward the familiar voice, accepting a
tissue that the latter was holding out. “J.P. Coming up to enjoy some of my
brilliant oratory?”

Bratt wiped his glasses with the tissue as he stepped
off the escalator. “Well, you’ll miss a great show, if I do say so
myself.”

“Yeah, but Brenton isn’t exactly a hard act to
follow,” Leblanc said, turning to walk away. “I might make it up to see you if
I don’t get stuck behind the Legal Aid guy at the bail hearings. Kick
ass.”

“You know I will.”

Bratt navigated his way down the crowded hallway.
Spotting the TV cameras posted outside the doors of the courtroom about thirty
feet ahead he quickened his steps in anticipation.

As he approached the courtroom the cameras turned
their bright lights toward him. Microphone-toting journalists stepped up and
smiled at him. Bratt smiled back, his warmest, most sincere smile and
came to them like a favorite son, home after a long absence. He would gladly
pause long enough to answer all their questions, no matter how long it took.
Twice during the trial Judge Smythe had needed to send the constable out to
drag him away from the cameras.

Once past the media scrum and inside the courtroom he
paused, like a warrior looking over the field before a battle. He saw that
Brenton was engaged in an all-too-friendly chat with Nancy Morin. As Bratt
approached, Brenton smiled stiffly and returned to the prosecution’s table,
grudgingly conceding defeat on at least this point.

Morin turned in her chair and looked up at Bratt,
smiling unabashedly. She wore a sharp gray suit, which, in Bratt’s eyes, looked
anything but business-like.

“Good-morning, Nancy.”

“That’s Sergeant-Detective Morin, sir. I happen to be
on duty.”

“If you’re going to be that officious you should wear
a uniform.”

Morin smiled mischievously and said, “If you don’t
like what I’m wearing I could always take it off.”

Bratt laughed nervously. He was always surprised to
find her more aggressive in her flirtation than he was. He was more
old-fashioned than he cared to admit and her brashness put him on the
defensive.

Morin must have sensed his discomfort, because she
quickly changed the subject. “All set to give your big speech.”

Bratt smiled, feet planted on more familiar turf now.
“You just wait and see. If you thought I was brilliant earlier in this
trial...”

Morin laughed, well-used to Bratt’s vanity as well as
his humor. “Well I’m absolutely dying with anticipation. I only hope I can
survive the wait.”

“What wait?”

“Oh, nobody told you?”

Bratt shook his head, mildly concerned now.

“Juror number six lives on the South Shore,” she
explained, “and he’s stuck on the Champlain Bridge behind nearly half a dozen
fender-benders. We’ve got a good hour wait ahead of us.”

Bratt only nodded at this news, trying to hide his
disappointment. Despite his years of experience, he always got an adrenalin
rush before making his closing arguments to a jury. This unexpected delay was
going to be torture for him. Morin was still looking up at him, smiling and
unaware of how bothered he was by the interruption in his plans, so he decided
he’d make the best of it.

“Well now,” he said, as he sat down next to her, “I’m
sure I could find worse company for the next hour or so.”

In room 4.05, where Nate Morris’s trial was being
held, the sequestered jurors all arrived together and on time from their
downtown hotel. They rendered their verdict shortly after arriving at the
courthouse, suggesting that they had held off on giving their verdict the
previous day in order to enjoy at least one night on the government’s tab.

About three-quarters of an hour after his own arrival
at court, Bratt was still sitting and chatting happily with Nancy Morin when
Jeannie walked into the courtroom. Bratt’s back was to the door, so he had no
idea she was there until he noticed several people looking toward the rear of
the room. He turned and saw his daughter, tears streaming down her face,
staring at him from where she stood.

Morin was in the middle of some not so slight sexual
innuendo when Bratt suddenly stood up, as if she had offended him. He paused
only long enough to take in the scene in front of him, before rushing toward
Jeannie. He was unsure how she felt about him at that moment, but his paternal
instincts permitted no hesitation. As soon as he got to her he opened his arms
and enveloped her in them. She pressed her face into his chest and sobbed, her
hands grasping the vest he wore under his robes.

“They let the bastard go, Daddy! They let him go!”

He had no words to comfort her at that moment, so he
just squeezed her tighter. After a few seconds it occurred to him that she was
there alone and he asked, “Claire?”

He could barely make out Jeannie’s answer through her
tears. “They took her to the infirmary. She fainted when they…when they gave
the verdict. She was on the floor and he just walked out without even looking
at her!”

“Christ, I’m so sorry, Jeannie.” It sounded trite, but
what else could he say? How else could he express how badly he felt at the turn
of events? He only hoped that she would recognize the sincerity in his words.
She looked up at his face, her sobbing starting to ebb, and nodded.

He wanted to take her somewhere more private, where
they could talk without being the center of attention. Out in the hallway,
though, the cameramen and journalists would be waiting to swarm all over them.
He looked over to the constable and signaled him closer.

“I can’t take her out the front door with those
cameras out there.”

The constable nodded his understanding. “OK, you can
take her through the judge’s door into the back hall. But you better follow me
so you don’t run into any jurors back there.”

His arm wrapped protectively around Jeannie, Bratt
hustled her down the aisle toward the front of the courtroom. Morin was still
standing where he had left her, her concern evident on her face. He glanced at
her briefly, but didn’t know how he could express his myriad feelings in that
split-second’s look, so he turned his eyes back to the constable ahead of him
and hoped she would understand.

Once into the corridor running behind all the
courtrooms, the constable directed them to an empty meeting room where they
could talk privately, and then left them. Bratt sat facing Jeannie, holding
both her hands in one of his, stroking her tear-streaked cheek with the other.
He waited for her to speak first.

“This really sucks,” she finally said.

“I know.”

“I really wish I hadn’t come today. I hate this whole
place. I hate everything that goes on here.”

Bratt feared this comment might signal a renewed
attack upon him or his profession, but he resisted the impulse to defend
himself.

“I just don’t understand,” she continued. “You take
twelve average people off the street, people that are as honest as anybody
else, and then convince them to let a guilty man go. How do you do that?”

Again Bratt held back from answering. Maybe it was a
rhetorical question, but he suspected that her comments were directed at him
personally.

She cleared up any doubts when she asked him, “Don’t
you have anything to say?”

“I really wasn’t sure what I should answer. I didn’t
think you would like whatever I had to say, so I thought it better...”

As he let his words trail off, she jumped to her feet.
The anger in her eyes reminded him of the look she had given him in the hallway
the day Claire broke down on the stand.

“Since when are you afraid to defend yourself, Daddy?
You can defend any scumbag that can afford to hire you, so how come you can’t
come up with a brilliant argument to convince me of how I’m seeing it all
wrong?”

“Jeannie, honey, let’s not do this now.”

“Why not? This is as good a time as any. Aren’t you
supposed to think fast on your feet? So, think about this, Mr. Defense Lawyer:
he raped her and he walked away! You used to give us both piggyback rides, and
this creep raped her!”

“Dammit, why are you blaming me for what he did to
her?”

“Because you helped him get away with it!”

Her accusation hit him like a slap in the face. He
knew that her words applied equally to what Morris had done to Claire as well
as to the crime he had been acquitted of four years earlier. An acquittal that
had come courtesy of the courtroom tactics of one Robert Bratt, defense
attorney to the rich and infamous. Details of that earlier trial tried to force
their way into Bratt’s mind, but he quickly shoved them back into the recesses
of his memory. The sight of Claire crumbling under cross-examination had been
reminder enough of how easily a nervous witness could be torn apart in court.

Jeannie didn’t give him any more time to think of a
reply before lashing out with, “It could have been me that he raped!”

Bratt jumped to his feet.

“Christ, this is ridiculous! Are you going to hold me
responsible every time a client goes out and commits another crime?”

“Why not? You’re always so quick to hog the credit
when you win, but you never think about the consequences, do you? If that
bastard had gone to jail for what he did four years ago, he might never have
done it again. But you were just too damn good a lawyer!”

“This is insane. I was just-”

“Doing my job,” Jeannie cut in, parroting the last
line of every lawyer’s defense.

She looked at her father defiantly, as if daring him
to answer her back. But Bratt did not answer. He wanted to yell out that her
accusations, however logical on the surface, were too simplistic and patently
unfair to him and to the whole legal profession. He knew this in his mind, but
in his heart he couldn’t find the words to answer her.

He suddenly felt very old and tired, as if all the
life had gone out of him. All his stock answers to Jeannie’s questions seemed
weak and inappropriate.

The spell that held them both in place, staring at
each other wordlessly, was broken when the door opened and the constable stuck
his head into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt, but number six just got here. The
judge wants you to start right away.”

Bratt still couldn’t pull his gaze away from Jeannie.
He couldn’t leave this situation unresolved, yet there was no more time to
talk.

“I think we really need to talk about this some more,
OK? Tonight, when we get home. Please?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she silently turned
and walked out the door ahead of him and was quickly gone down the corridor. He
knew that she could have made some sort of peace with him if she had wanted to,
but she preferred leaving him twisting in the wind. Her bitterness would not
let her turn back. Now he would have to put all thoughts of this argument
behind him and get back to court. They were waiting for him.

A few minutes later, Robert Bratt stood at the broad
desk that passed for a lectern in the courtroom, his shoulders bowed under the
weight of the guilt his daughter had laid on him. He watched as the twelve
jurors, eight women and four men, entered the room and took their seats.
Several of them glanced over in his direction. Their cheerful expressions
revealed that, having watched him at work for two months, they were expecting
him to put on a good show for them this morning. At least two of the female
jurors smiled at him, and not for the first time during the
trial.

The room was now fairly full. A few journalists
occupied the front row. Nancy Morin, whose frown of concern still lingered, sat
just behind them. Around her sat various retirees and unemployed types that had
drifted in during the weeks of the trial’s progress and ended up coming back
for each new episode.

Yet Bratt just continued to stand, silent and
motionless, totally unaffected by the people in the court or their expectations
of him. He stood so impassively, while the jurors entered and the judge settled
everyone in the courtroom down, that his client surely felt confident that
Bratt was focusing on the job at hand, blocking out all the irrelevant
distractions around him.

As it so happened, Bratt’s mind was so unfocussed on
the case he was about to plead that Judge Smythe had to clear his throat
meaningfully twice, and finally call out Bratt’s name, ever so politely, in
order to get the lawyer’s attention.

This finally brought Bratt back from his reverie, and
he saw that they were all waiting for him to start. A momentary look of
confusion flashed across his face, then it was gone. He was aware of what he
was there to do, but a sort of mental inertia was keeping him from getting
started, as Jeannie’s words continued to ring in his ears.

He looked over the twelve still-patient faces before
him and realized that he was going to look like a fool if he didn’t say
something soon. He tried to will his daughter’s tear-filled voice to leave him
in peace just long enough for him to get through the morning.

Slowly, a sense of detached calm came over him. He
began to feel like a disinterested observer with no stake in what was
happening. He felt no pressure on himself at all, and he stood perceptibly
straighter. He managed to let all of Jeannie’s arguments fade away quietly,
until the sound of her voice in his memory was just so much background
noise.

Then, as if nothing else in the world could have been
on his mind, he smiled the casually handsome smile he reserved for juries and
women he hoped to seduce. He greeted the jurors with a bright “Good morning,
everyone,” and they greeted him back cheerfully, relieved, perhaps, that all
was back to normal.

To his left, Sam Brenton shifted uncomfortably in his
seat, realizing that his presence in the courtroom had just become superfluous.
Bratt’s hands, soft and perfectly-manicured, opened his file folder and settled
his neatly written notes on the desk in front of him.

He heard a warm, rich voice begin to speak. It was
reading some of the words that were written on the pages, and adding many other
words. He recognized the voice as his own, and heard in it the confidence and
ease he expected of himself at this time.

In his mind’s eye he stepped forward and turned around
to watch himself give his final arguments. He no longer saw the judge or the
jury. He was alone in the courtroom. With total self-absorption, he studied
every move that he made: how he turned his head, how he smiled occasionally,
how he leaned forward and stood silently, his palms pressed down on the desk in
front of him, when the moment called for seriousness.

He was perfectly aware of the impression he was making
with his words, his tone of voice and his body language. These all had an
unrehearsed quality, a seemingly honest spontaneity about them, as if he was
just having a relaxed chat with the jurors, talking off the cuff. Years of practice
had gone into refining his technique to get just that effect and he smiled
inwardly as he watched it work its magic once more. His timing was perfect.
Like a veteran stand-up comic, he knew just how long to pause before hitting
his audience with a punch line.

Look at their eyes, he thought.
Look at the expressions on their faces. They’re eating up every word I say.